Me Time ✨

Hello, Cadre family. Got my trusted Mickey hat on today. It's cold out there. It's Minnesota. I'm excited to be here with all of you, and I am in a different space today, so I'll just hang out for a few minutes here, just a few breaths before getting started to let people come on in. I was fancy. Hi, Luke. Hi. Speak wonder. Happy Sunday. It's always fun when you come in because you just slam on the hearts, and it's like love is pouring in. It's gorgeous, beautiful. I love it. So I'm excited to be here.

On me time. I'm sitting in a chair that swirls. I should never sit in those. I like to move. Hi, Jules. How you doing today? I just got done teaching a spin class. Was a Latin theme today, so it was like, all Latin music. Like, how fun is that? It just makes you want to dance. But I came up here to. Oh, you're having coffee and writing today, I see. I came up here to a different space. So I live in an apartment building, and we have access to this rooftop lounge. And when I came in here today, it was fascinating because I already had my topic in mind.

And I walked into this room, and the TV was on in this room, and it was loud. It was blaring. And then the music was also on, and it was loud, and it was blaring, and it just was like a sensory overload. Jules, you and the kids are dipping strawberries in chocolate. I'll send you my address later. So when I came into this space, it was so loud, and it's this beautiful place. It's a room, Rooftop sky lounge. I get to look out over the stone arch bridge right here. S. bank Stadium up here and other parts of, like, downtown Minneapolis over here, right?

So I love this space, and it's beautiful, But I find oftentimes that when I walk into spaces and buildings or all around, there's so much noise, right? Like, I teach spin classes. I'm in loud music for 45 minutes, and the first thing I do when I get in my car afterwards is I shut off the radio. And I love listening to music, but there's something beautiful about the quiet. But there's also something interesting about the quiet. So I'll give you an example. When I teach a spin class, sometimes there are songs that have, like, a long ending before the song actually cuts off, but it goes quiet.

It's as if the artist intentionally wanted to create a pause for dramatic effect after their song is complete before you got pushed into the Next song so that maybe you could process what just happened musically or how you felt emotionally connecting into that music. Now, there are many times where people will hit the pause in a song if they're teaching a class and fast forward through that pause. But I like to not do that. People expect you to, but what I find is a lot of magic in that little bitty quiet space.

Because sometimes we get really uncomfortable and quiet. So you're in a crowd, and all of a sudden, everything goes silent, and you're in a conversation with people, and there's no more words to be said, and there's silence. Or maybe somebody is grieving or really upset, and they don't have any words. Hi. J. got me to come in blasting. Happy Sunday. I love this. Could you go out and come back in again? That was great. Kidding. Don't leave. But there's something about the silence that rocks us a little bit.

It's as if we need to fill space and time. So if I sit here for five seconds, quiet, how does it make you feel? So I'll tell you how it makes me feel as a speaker. The first second, I'm like, I got this. The second second, take a breath. The third second, gosh, are they annoyed. The fourth second, my heart starts to beat a little fast. And by the fifth second, I'm bursting to say something because I. I'm holding that space. Jules says quiet is peaceful wherever you are. Looks beautiful. Enjoy it.

Thank you. I am just sitting in a beautiful space in our apartment building. But what I love about it is how often do you just seek quiet? There's always a buzz of a city, and you need to get out of the city to not see the lights or the halo effect of the lights, or you need to be really intentional about finding a space to find quiet. Sometimes I'll put my headphones in, not because I'm listening to anything, but because I want a little extra buffer of quiet or calming noise, because it allows me to just be in that space of just quiet for a second and inside that quiet.

So inside that space where we can focus on our breath and our thoughts, suspend, our thoughts, take a pause. That is when our bodies can actually reset. Our parasympathetic can reset, our brains can find a calm, and then they become more creative. We're more innovative. We have the most ideas when we allow our brains to take a space to take a pause. So whether it's in a conversation with someone and you take a breath and maybe you listen just a little more intently before you Thrust in with all of your ideas and words.

Maybe it's allowing yourself to sit still for five minutes that's hard sometimes. Some people are really great at it. And yes, I meditate and I do lead sound bath meditations. However, I am a rocker. I don't know if any of you are parents with children who just consistently move, but like, I am a rocker, or I would tap my foot to fall asleep, or I would sit in a chair like I am right now and I turn because it's soothing to me. But just sitting in that space, sometimes that can be really hard. And.

And the question would be why? Why is it hard to just sit calm? I'll ask you why is it hard for you to sit down and take a breath? Why is it hard to not fill that void of time with something? Why is it difficult to shut off everything? We live in a space right now where there's so much around us all the time, whether it's our phones that we use for everything. Remember when we actually had, like, a real camera and you would carry your real camera around and you would use that to take photos and then check it out later and be like, wow, I missed that shot.

Or, wow, that shot was great. I didn't even know I captured that one right. I was at an event recently and they pulled out those little Polaroid cameras or the disposable cameras, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever because it had, like, real film and they were taking selfies and they didn't even know if the selfie worked. And it didn't matter because we smiled and we took a photo. Yeah, Speak. Wonder says it's hard to take the pause because the world is fixated on accomplishing things.

How many times do you get asked the question, what are you going to do this weekend? Versus how are you going to be this weekend? If we just change the question every ever so slightly, Even just the phrasing, what are you going to do this weekend? Implies that if you don't have anything planned, there's something wrong. I love answering the question. Nothing. I love telling people that. Sundays after I teach spin class and after I'm done with Cadre, most Sundays, I don't plan anything and I just roll with it.

If something comes up, somebody invites me to something, I say yes if it feels right. Or I go to my studio and I make crystal bracelets if it feels right. And sometimes I can wake up on a Monday and be like, I didn't get blank done over the weekend. And you know what that's okay, because life and the fulfillment of life, in my opinion, isn't dictated by the number of boxes that we check. It's the number of experiences that we have. It's the learning that we allow ourselves to do. It's being in the moment.

So here's my Sunday challenge to you. How might we go for that walk without our headphones and without our actual phone and just walk? If you need to put a time on it, wear a watch. Actually, don't wear watches. So that can be a problem. Or not. But what if you drove in the car and you didn't turn on the radio or an audiobook or a podcast and you didn't feel like you had to fill that space with learning something or doing something? What if you came to that space in the building that you live? If you're in a condo or an apartment and you go to that room that you never go to, and you shut off everything and you just be for just a few minutes and breathe.

Now here's what's funny. I'm going to share this with you. Real, real talk here. We're getting real. I will often do that for myself. And then about three minutes in, my brain starts to go like, oh, crap, what am I supposed to be doing? Or what? What client work am I. Should I do? Or what if my team can't get ahold of me? Or. Or. Or. Or. And. And that's when I know that I need it the most. The moment that I put my phone down, my headphones down, I walk away, I let it go. I take Major for a walk without any devices, which means I actually have to take, like, cash or something.

If we go to the coffee shop, which is totally fine, but it's that moment that we put it down. How much time passes before we start to feel conflicted about letting our phone go or that we should be doing something else? Doing, doing, doing. My nickname is Doer. I don't know how I feel about that. I used to really think it was funny, but now I'm like, I don't want to be a doer all the time. Sometimes I just want to be a beer and just be. So today on meantime, I wanted to bring in the invitation and the conversation about the pause, the quiet.

And how might we explore that quiet? The first part of the quiet is when we do it. How do we feel in the first five minutes or five seconds? Because that feeling will dictate if we're doing too much. It will be an indication that maybe it was too Long since we took the pause. The last time I drove to and from Duluth in one day on Thursday, the sound bath inside of Sauna, it was really pretty up there. And on my way back, I did two things. I. One, shut everything off, the music off, for, like, 30 minutes, and I just drove and I looked at the moon, and she was beautiful, and I just allowed myself to be present.

And then the second thing I did is I played a game with Siri, and I threw out artists that I hadn't listened to for, like, decades, just random artists, just to see what she would come up with for the song. And I sang out loud because in that moment, I could have listened to another podcast. I have a list of audiobooks to listen to. But in that moment, I was so jazzed from the event that I had just been in that I wanted to take a pause for the first part of my drive and just reflect on what happened and just hold on to the energy of what I felt during that moment.

And then I wanted to play because I was so happy for how it went and that I got to be a part of something that felt really magical. And so then I wanted to play. I still had another hour home, and so I just sang random songs like Lionel Richie. When was the last time you listened to Lionel Richie? Maybe some of you don't even know who he is. That's not the point. The point is, is take pause. Because our brains are on so much overdrive. We look at Instagram, we see who liked what, and it triggers us to have a dopamine rush, right?

So we get addicted to the dopamine rush in our brain by somebody liking a post or hearting a story or anything that has to do with that. That's the world that we live in right now. We're so activated so often. So I'm going to invite you today to just take a pause, and then my invitation to you will be to find a pause two more times this week. Doesn't have to be every day. Might not be possible. It might be uncomfortable. But my invitation is to get uncomfortable in the pause to see if we can take that pause and expand it so we can go from five seconds to five minutes to five hours, maybe.